Corpus-Paul

["Eric Zuesse" <cettel AT shoreham.net>]

Re: Bob MacDonald's:

> Eric [said to Bob]: You refer to your knowing about the "actions" and
"motive" of James
> and Peter (Cephas) from their "writing about the love of God," but what
> writing from James, and what writing from Peter are you referring to here?
>
> Bob: you are right in assuming that I take the general letters as having
the
> mark of the apostles they are named after and as not pseudipigraphal. It
is
> not a strongly held position of mine. I see them through the lens of 1900
> years. A recent essay of mine (see homepage - lots of naivety there) noted
> that James and Paul both appeal to the ultimate law concerning love of
> neighbour. I take the character of James (and Peter) from these character
> witnesses - whatever pen wrote the words first in their name.

If you are treating the Bible as a preacher does, as an object of devotion,
rather that as a scientist does, as documentary evidence from which to
reconstruct, as best can be done, a scientific history of the matters it
purports to deal with, then the only objection I would have to your practise
is that I would feel that you are cheating your congregation by the cavalier
way in which you are dealing with truth, and unfortunately,
congregation-members are naive enough to accept uncritically such falsehoods
they hear preached by their ministers.

However, if you are treating the Bible as documentary evidence from which to
reconstruct a scientific history of the matters it purports to deal with,
then I would object that the practise you have described is not scientific
at all.

You have drawn scientifically unjustifiable inferences from forgeries as if
they were not forgeries. You have treated those forged letters as if they
were not. This was the basis upon which your "knowledge" of Peter and James
was based.

Your current comment, "It is not a strongly held position of mine," is
false, no matter how sincerely you might believe it to be true--and I feel
confident that you do intend it with full sincerity. Your "It" here refers,
actually, to your interpretation of the organizational structure of the
Jesus sect of Jews before they were replaced by Paul's gang. Quite evidently
from the comments you were making about James and Peter, your interpretation
is that Paul, and the Christianity that followed after him, did not commit
any coup d'etat that replaced the disciples, but that Paul and his followers
were authentically followers of Jesus, and of whomever He appointed as his
successor, which you probably think to be Peter, since Matthew 16:18 and
other passages written by Paul's followers state that to be so.

Consequently, if your historical reconstruction of the origins of
Christianity is based upon the unscientific use of the evidence that you
have indicated by your acceptance of the James and Peter epistles as being
not forgeries, then there is no scientific merit to that reconstruction of
history, but only whatever religious merit the forgers and other coup
participants might have been able legitimately to claim.

I say this with deep regret. You seem to be an earnest, fine, human being.
But when I was doing the research for my previous book and found in Hitler's
private notes of 1919 his reference to "The Bible--Monumental History of
Mankind," and the outline there of his subsequent theory behind the
Holocaust that was derived from his quite logical reading of that book as
being "History," in which he drew ultimately from over a hundred different
passages his conclusion that the only way to get rid of "original sin" was
to annihilate "the people of Satan," I figured that I ought to check out how
that book of "History" came to be written. Hitler's reading of Genesis 3 was
strictly through the Christian eyes of John 8:44, Matthew 23:31-8,
Revelation 20:1-6, and other such passages about the devil, the snake, and
the Jew. A decent Christian believer, such as yourself, might take issue
with Hitler's reading of these passages, but that's not important if the
Bible isn't really a book of "History" after all.

What struck me about Hitler's reading of the Bible is how coherent it was,
and how earnestly he tried to find a way through its many contradictions so
as to produce an understanding that reduced them to a minimum. But what use
is it anyway, if his underlying assumption of the book's historicity is
simply false?

Consequently, I take seriously anyone's mere assumption that the Bible is a
book of history rather than of possibly very political and largely evil
myths. Muslims likewise believe that the Quran is Truth, and even though
some Muslims disagree with Osama bin Laden's reading of the Quran, I don't
see their views as being better than Osama's. What really disturbs me is
that underlying assumption, "The Bible--Monumental History of Mankind." Are
these books really "History"?

It's an important question--important enough to deserve scientific
investigation, and not merely self-serving religious "investigations."

> Eric: The two "Peter" letters in the New Testament are generally
considered
> to be forgeries
> Bob: pseudipigraphy is not forgery - whoever wrote James 2:13 was not
> falsifying a signature. Your language is loaded - Mr Rumpole raises an
> objection to your choice of words.

Among the five definitions my dictionary gives for "forgery," three of them
refer accurately to what you refer to by the standard scholars' euphemism of
"pseudipigraphy," but I'll choose here just one: "any spurious work that is
claimed to be genuine." That, Bob, is what you did: you treated these works
as if they were genuine, and *you reasoned from their contents as if those
letters were genuine.*

My language is not "loaded," it is scientifically concerned with
categorizing items of evidence. You have categorized these items wrongly
from a scientific standpoint. Now you are trying to divert into semantic
issues.

As I had said in my previous note, our concerns are very different. Why
don't we just leave it at that.

Best,
Eric Zuesse
cettel AT shoreham.net